Forum on Charlotte Epstein’s <i>Birth of the State: The Place of the Body in Crafting Modern Politics</i>

In this forum, four authors discuss Charlotte Epstein’s book Birth of the State: The Place of the Body in Crafting Modern Politics published in 2021. After having situated this book in a wider context of international and political thought, Jens Bartelson discusses the role of constructivism in its argument along with the relationship between continuity and change implicit in the account. Nina Krickel-Choi focuses on how the duality of mind and body has been reproduced in contemporary security studies and how this duality could be overcome. She also raises questions about different ways of understanding the body of the state and its implications. R. B. J. Walker ponders the relationship between form and substance in Epstein’s reading of Hobbes and its implications for how security and the modern international system are understood in the analysis. Finally, Lauren Wilcox focuses on the problem of the body and embodiment in political thought, highlighting how the relationship between embodiment, the modern state and world order might look to all those excluded from or violently included within this order.